Owls Well That Ends Well(12)

“No, it’s Dr. Gruber,” Michael said. “Chairman of the Music Department. I’d better go rescue him.”

Michael took off running. Uncle Floyd emerged from the other toilet and joined the crowd gawking up at the airborne professor.

“Good heavens,” exclaimed a voice behind me, in an English accent.

“Morning, Giles,” I said, turning to greet him. Giles Rathbone was one of Michael’s closest friends on the Caerphilly College faculty, not to mention a member of his tenure committee.

And he wasn’t wearing a costume. I liked Giles.

“I had no idea yard sales were so … lively,” he said, staring up at the boom lift with visible alarm.

“This isn’t your typical yard sale,” I said.

“Or that so many people would be out this early,” he added, looking around as if the crowd unnerved him as much as Dr. Gruber’s plight.

I had to smile. Giles’s tall form, loosely draped, as always, in tweed and corduroy, was hunched protectively and his eyes behind the thick glasses blinked and watered as if unused to this much brightness. Seeing Giles out-of-doors always reminded me of the scene at the beginning of The Wind in the Willows where Mole emerges into the sunlight.

“A bit overwhelming,” I said, and Giles nodded in agreement. He looked half ready to bolt back to his car. I suppressed a sigh of exasperation. How had Michael ever befriended such a recluse? I’d spent the first six months I’d known Giles convincing him that it was okay to call me Meg rather than Miss Langslow. Though come to think of it, perhaps I’d only gotten him to drop the Miss. I couldn’t remember if he’d ever actually called me Meg.

Friends had warned me that it could be hard work, getting your significant other’s male friends to accept you, but I hadn’t expected the process to be quite so much like coaxing a small nocturnal animal out of its hole.

Though that reminded me: I had bait today. I fished around in my pocket until I found a small slip of paper I’d stuck there.

“Here,” I said, handing it to Giles. “I jotted down a map of which tables are selling books.”

“Ah, thanks,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll find that helpful.” I hoped so. Sooner or later, I was sure, I could break through Giles’s reserve and turn polite acceptance into real friendship.

“It’s only fair,” I said. “You were an enormous help dealing with Edwina’s library. Without you, we’d have put a lot of valuable books out for the yard sale.”

Giles nodded absently and turned his attention to the map. Well, so much for bonding with Giles today.

I heard a small commotion to my right, and turned to see Gordon-you-thief, attempting to drag two oversized boxes through the crowd.

“Hey, Guiles,” Gordon called. It took me a second to realize that he was talking to Giles, and mispronouncing his name, with a hard “G” rather than a soft one.

“I think he’s calling you,” I said to Giles, in an undertone.

“Maybe if I ignore him he’ll go away,” Giles said, through clenched teeth.

“No such luck,” I said. “He’s headed this way.”

“Hey, Guiles,” Gordon repeated, coming up to stand in front of Giles with his back toward me. “Glad I ran into you.”

“Hello, Gordon,” Giles said, edging back slightly.

“You’re still collecting R. Austin Freeman, right?” Gordon said, taking a half step to close up the distance between them.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“R. Austin Freeman’s an early-twentieth-century mystery author,” Giles said turning to me and, not accidentally, edging farther away from Gordon. “His protagonist was both a lawyer and a doctor—sort of a late-Victorian Quincy. I’ve been collecting his books for years. My collection’s nearly complete, though,” he said, turning back to Gordon and stepping away slightly when he realized that Gordon had again closed the gap to what was, for Giles, uncomfortably close quarters.

I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or feel sorry for Giles. I’d done this dance with Gordon myself, backing away half a step at a time as he kept inching closer than I found comfortable. At first, I’d assumed that we just had very different senses of personal space, but eventually I’d realized that Gordon did it deliberately, to keep people off balance in a negotiation.

Or perhaps just to annoy them. At any rate, once I knew what he was doing, I’d figured out how to stop him. Whenever he tried to crowd me, I’d step even closer and peer down my nose at him. At 5’ 10”, I was a good five or six inches taller than Gordon, and he didn’t like having to crane his neck to see me.